Saturday, 28 September 2013

Now, I will get around to dealing with the third part of De
Re Militari, but before I do, I really want to review this book. The book in
question is ‘Under Another Sky’, by Charlotte Higgins (Jonathan Cape, 2013).

The book is subtitled Journeys in Roman Britain, and is a
series of accounts of travels into various parts of Britain (including
Scotland), looking at Roman remains (or at least, the remains of Roman Britain)
and giving something of an account of the meaning of such items, how they were
discovered and how interpreted.

The author of the book is a journalist at The Guardian
newspaper and a classicist with a useful grasp of Latin and Greek and knowledge
of Roman poetry and mythology which comes in handy in interpreting inscriptions
from monuments and mosaics.

As a wargamer, of course, her book is somewhat peripheral to
my main interests, but it does serve as a useful reminder that much of Roman
Britain was peaceful under the Empire, and culture did exist, commerce even,
perhaps, flourished, and, possibly, no one, in general, was unhappy enough to
rebel or invade terribly often.

The most interesting aspect of the book is that it is about
how Roman Britain came to be uncovered, interpreted and assumed into our picture
of the way the world is. I’m sure I have mentioned before this aspect of
history, in general. The popular view of history is that it relates to fact, to
dates, and battles, and kings and so on. However, as Miles Russell points out
in his book mentioned last week, even a skeleton of undisputable facts can have
more than one interpretation attached to it.

Higgins is not, as mentioned, an archaeologist, but she has
an eye for detail, even though it sometimes lapses into slightly purple prose.
Even well known Roman sites are sometimes overgrown, she comments, and some,
like Hadrian’s Wall are possibly overblown, although the local economy is
coming to rely on the tourism it generates.

Mostly, Higgins tells us the stories of artefacts and how
they are interpreted. In this, she largely, I think, would agree with Russell.
The archaeology is fragmented, and does not tell us a single, or at least,
straightforward, story. The interpretation of them is similarly fraught. For
example, she discusses the pictures commissioned for the Palace of Westminster.
A number of scenes from Roman Britain were proposed, but none included. British
history starts, there at least, with the conversion of Saxon kings to
Christianity. As Higgins remarks: ‘Perhaps the problem is, and has been since
antiquity, that Roman Britain is too jagged and unsettling and ambiguous to be
pulled into line. It will never settle into telling us one thing: it will just
as soon tell us the opposite’ (p 228-9).

How, then, can Roman Britain be interpreted. Of course, the
Victorians and those earlier had views. For example, Higgins describes how, for
example, William Camden, writing in the 1580’s, saw savage Britain being
civilised by the Romans. Such a view continued throughout the eras of the
British Empires, and became, perhaps, a reflection of how the intellectuals of
that Empire, educated, of course in the classics of Greece and Rome, saw their
own mission.

Of course, it was possible to peer down the other end of the
telescope. The existence of Hadrian’s Wall and the Antonine Wall could be used
for Scottish purposes: clearly, the ancestors of the current residents had
never been conquered. Of course, the current state of Roman Britain led to
warnings of the potential end of the British Empire.

The Victorians, or some of them, also used Roman Britain as
a terrible warning for their own age. They could take, say, Tacitus’ warning about
the growing decadence of Rome during the early second century and apply it to
themselves. The Roman Empire fell because of this growing softness. This could
be applied to Britain, the civilising world power of its time. Rome, in the
end, failed, and failed after becoming a publicly Christian state. This is, of
course, something that troubled St Augustine, as well.

As Higgins notes (p. 175) the pendulum has swung.
Post-colonialism now means that the Romans (and, for that matter, the
Victorians) are now viewed as the villains of the piece. This, of course,
politicises Roman Britain for our present day. We tend to over-empathise with
the conquerors, because they wrote the history. Roman-ness was only wafer thin,
and so we return to Russell and Laycock’s ‘Un-Roman Britain’.

These views work themselves out into our culture. Rosemary
Sutcliffe’s ‘The Eagle of the Ninth’ is perhaps one of the most popular stories
of Roman Britain. It has been filmed, recently, and as such has consciously,
perhaps, been displayed as a modern problem. A tenuous military hold is
maintained over a restive native population. The landscape is unknown, treacherous,
dangerous. Disaster is just around the corner, or over the hill.

There is, thus, a conflict at the heart of our
interpretations of Roman Britain, between the civilising Romans who bought all
sorts of benefits to the place, and the savage Romans, who bought death,
destruction and slavery to the freedom loving Britons.

Our own interpretation of Roman Britain is liable, I think,
to be influenced by whichever of these views we happen to subscribe to. And so,
the way we wargame is going to be influenced by it as well. How do we view the
invasions of Britain? An invitation from a client king in trouble? A piece of
theatre designed for the home audience? Are the Roman armies the cutting edge
of a civilizing force or a crushing lapse into even greater barbarism?

You may well think that these issues are nothing to do with
wargaming, but I think I would claim that they do have at least some contact.
To start with, whether we like it or not, such resonances rebound through
history. The classical world has been rediscovered several times during our
history and used to redescribe the world in those terms. As noted, even the
conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have been portrayed in terms of Roman
Britain.

Secondly, of course, we have only the same sources as the
Victorians to play with. Tacitus is Tacitus, the same as he was for them. We
have other interpretations, but of course most of us do not read Latin so miss
the nuances. Varying interpretations and applications of the lessons of history
are, themselves, lessons from history. Wargaming itself is built on such
shifting sands.

Saturday, 21 September 2013

The mysteries of Roman Britain, or at least, Britain in the
Roman Empire are manifold. Possibly the most mysterious of them are, roughly
speaking, the beginning of Roman Britain, and its end. How did the Romans come
to be in Britain in the first place, and how did they end up leaving.

To focus on the first of these areas, that is the beginning
of Roman Britain, is to try to understand a one sided story, for the sources of
Roman history are, of course Roman. While Caesar, Tacitus, Seutonius and Dio
Cassius mention Britain, it is from the perspective of Rome. The Britons are mute.

We therefore do have an account of how Britain came to be
part of the Roman Empire, but it is a Roman account. Roughly speaking, Caesar
invaded twice in 55 and 54 BC to punish the Britons for aiding the Gauls
against him. He gave them a reasonably good thrashing and ensured that they
behaved themselves for the next hundred years or so.

In 43 AD, to secure himself on the throne and, possibly to
outdo the deified Caesar, Claudius authorised an invasion, which defeated the
assorted British tribes, crossed the Medway and Thames and then, the commander
having summoned the Emperor for the coup de grace, took Colchester and received
the submission of the Britons.

Thereafter, the Romans simply gradually pushed out across
the country, albeit with a few hiccoughs such as Boudicca’s rebellion and a
wobble wherein the whole of the country was taken by Agricola and then the
legions were withdrawn to the line of Hadrian’s Wall.

This, then is the established narrative of the beginnings of
Roman Britain. However, I have just finished a book, ‘Bloodline: The Celtic
Kings of Roman Britain’, by Miles Russell (Amberley, 2010) which casts doubt on
this, which Russell calls Established Fact.

There is, I think, little doubt that the Romans did in fact
turn up in 43 AD, but practically nothing else, as Russell notes, is really
known. The landing of the Romans at Richborough is assumed, not proven. The
location of the battles at The Medway and Thames are inferred from dubious
(much later) narratives, and so on. There is also substantial archaeological
evidence that Roman forts were established in Britain before 43 AD. None of these issues usually disturb the basis
of the invasion narrative.

Those of you with decent memories will realise that Russell
has a track record here. He was the co-author of ‘Un-Roman Britain’, which I
mentioned here a while ago, which sought to overturn the applecart on the
Romanisation of the country. In that work, a chapter or so was devoted to the
establishment of Roman Britain. This is the book sized version of that.

As I understand it (and it is a complex story, with large
gaps), Caesar invaded to aggrandise Caesar by taking his armies to the end of
the world. He was beaten, more or less, by the guerrilla tactics of the Britons
and managed to extricate himself because the Britons were politically disunited
and did not want to have a successful war leader, who might then conquer the
other tribes. Agreements were made, however with pro-Roman tribes, who then
benefitted from this status to trade with the Continent and also from some sort
of protection from Rome.

It is a matter of record that both Augustus and Caligula
contemplated the invasion of Britain, but the questions arise as to why they
did so and, finally, why they did not actually invade. Russell suggests that
this was due to internal British dynastic policies; as the pro-Roman leaders
die off, tensions arise between their heirs, and some may take an anti-Roman
stance. As Briton (or at least, the south coast) is effectively the northern
frontier of the Empire, Roman policy would be to ensure the client status of,
at least, those states (to use an anachronous term) along the coast within
reasonable pirate sailing of the southern shore.

This politicking and sabre-rattling thus accounts for both
the movements of troops under Augustus and Caligula and the evidence of Roman
forts in Britain. Rome was simply keeping an eye on its interests in the client
kingdoms.

For the invasion, Russell suggests that possibly the initial
force was much smaller than previously thought, about 5500 men, and that it
landed at pro-Roman Chichester (or thereabouts), and that the battle of the
Medway was fought on the Arun in Sussex. He also suggests that this was a Roman
intervention in favour of the pro-Roman faction, and that the bulk of the
fighting was done by British. For example, the river, which Dio Cassius reports
being crossed by Keltoi was, in fact, crossed by British allies of the Romans
and not, as is usually suggested, by Batavian auxiliaries.

I think the overall point Russell is trying to make is that the
history and archaeology of Roman Britain is too splintered and biased to
support the overall narrative that we usually follow. While he does not
explicitly reject the established narrative, he shows, fairly convincingly,
that it does rely on a given reading of the evidence. Other readings are
equally viable, insofar as they accord with the evidence. Indeed, he argues
that his version might accord better with the archaeological evidence and with
the known attitude of the Empire to its clients beyond the border.

There are a few downsides to the book. Firstly, there is no
proper bibliography, which makes finding the references difficult. Secondly, it
is written in a consciously abrasive style. He describes Caesar’s legionaries
as ‘heavily armed psychopaths’ (p. 33), and Caesar himself as ‘…nothing more
than an opportunistic bully, a callous tyrant and one of the greatest mass murderers
in history.’ (p. 35) While he is understandably trying to make a point about
Caesar and his men, upturning the classical scholarship of centuries which has
relied on Caesar’s description of himself as being accurate, it is hardly
likely to endear his argument, whatever its merits, to his audience.

Finally, I think that what Russell has achieved is to question
the basic narrative of Roman Britain’s origins. The anomalies he weaves into
his narrative have been sitting on the shelf waiting for answers for a number
of years, and he manages to include them. Whether or not his narrative is more
nearly correct is not for me to say; I am not an archaeologist. But, as a
wargamer, I have to say that he provides some intriguing alternatives to the
normal Battle of the Medway which is about all you can say about the Roman invasion
of Britain.

Saturday, 14 September 2013

According to Vegetius, by his day the legion had decayed.
The name was still there, but the unit was hollowed out, under strength and
under-disciplined. It was time for a return to the old ways.

Interestingly, Vegetius incorporates a significant degree of
Christianity into his text. The recruits into a legion are to ‘swear by God, by
Christ and by the Holy Ghost, and by the majesty of the Emperor who, after God,
should be the chief object of the love and veneration of mankind.’ This is, of
course, a quick theological two-step around the tricky fact that the original
Romans were not Christians but pagans, and, in fact, worshipped the Emperors.

Within this, then, is a tacit admission that history cannot
be repeated. The legionaries in Vegetius’ day could not swear the same oaths as
in Augustus’. The religious context has changed, and some means of squaring the
idea of legions and the ‘military oath’ with the effective religion of the
Empire has to be found.

The legion, Vegetius says, should be of ten cohorts, the
first being a double one. The strength of a cohort is five hundred and
fifty-five foot and sixty six horse, giving a total legion of six thousand one
hundred foot and seven hundred and twenty six horse. Legions should never be
understrength, he claims, but could be made stronger by the addition of extra
cohorts.

This, again, is fairly standard ‘Roman’ fare, but it does
seem to ignore the peculiarities and practicalities of defending and policing the
empire. We know from, for example, the Vindolanda tablets, that cohorts even on
an active frontier could muster way below their nominal strength. Vegetius is,
it seems focussing on a field army unit, not on frontier forces.

Assuming that the limes of the empire were still garrisoned,
we can see that for Vegetius’ legion, frontier work was not in mind.
Considering (to take a random example) some of the works on Hadrian’s Wall, the
turrets would have, perhaps, accommodated eight men or so, about the size of
the basic ‘buddy group’ of the century. This is not a unit that can be concentrated
particularly quickly.

This then refocuses attention on one of the more interesting
(to wargamers, anyway) controversies of the last few years in Roman
Historiography: the ‘Grand Strategy’ of the Empire. Unfortunately the debate
has sometimes caused more heat than light and the original work, by Edward
Luttwak has not always been treated on its own merits.

Essentially, Luttwak argues that in the early empire, Rome
was simply advancing, securing its frontiers by a system of allies and client
king agreements, which provided a buffer zone and early warning system for
trouble from ‘outside’. Often, however, this buffer zone became itself a
problem, and, ultimately, had to be absorbed into the empire proper. Thus the
empire expanded, or, eventually, threatened to over-expand.

The solution, implemented by Hadrian, was to stabilize the
boundaries and make it clear what was ‘in’ and what was ‘out’ of the empire.
There were still outposts beyond, of course, the eyes and ears watching for
trouble and the limes themselves, such as Hadrian’s Wall were not isolated fortresses
but were defences in depth.

Over time, Luttwak suggests, this system evolved to leave a
thinly guarded frontier line, backed up by powerful field armies based on
fortresses in rear areas. Thus, Hadrian’s Wall was backed by Chester and York,
covering both sides of the Pennines.

The consequence of this shift, according to Luttwak, was
that the early empire fought beyond its boundaries, while the later empire
fought within them. I think it is fair to say that Luttwak’s analysis has been
rather disputed, but also that no-one has come up with any better ideas.
Luttwak does not, I think say (as has been attributed to him) this this process
was deliberate; it simply arose from the considerations of the context (money,
men, resources, etc). Luttwak is a military strategist, not, strictly a
classical historian and he wrote ‘The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire’ in
the 1970’s. There are parallels, perhaps, with the Cold War situation in Europe
and NATO’s Shield and Sword policy.

Anyway, back to Vegetius. In drawing up his legion for
battle, I confess I got a little confused. In his enthusiasm for the old ways,
Vegetius divides his legion into principes, the first line of five cohorts, and
hastate, the second (as is the Polybius manipular legion). Ten cohorts in
total, the full strength of the legion’s infantry. Behind them he claims, cone
the light troops, javelins, archers, sligners and so on. Then behind them come
the triarii, who wait kneeling until needed. These are not, so far as I can
tell, included in the legion’s establishment. I am not quite sure what is going
on here. A bit too much backwards looking? An inability to count? A corruption
in the text? Any or all of these could be the case, but as I am not using a
scholarly edition I cannot tell.

Vegetius then gives a standard sort of account of a legion
in battle. The light troops engage first, then the lines of the legion, with
strict instructions to the heavy foot not to pursue beaten enemies. This is to
be left to the light foot and cavalry (who are on the wings, incidentally).

Vegetius finishes section two of De Re Militari with
regulations for promotion within the legion, keeping records and accounts,
music and drills.

The latter is, in part, a repeat of things in section one.
The most interesting point, perhaps, is about depositions. Half of any donative
is to be kept back by the unit, to keep the soldiers loyal. Where your money is,
there is your heart, evidently.

As for promotion, Vegetius conceives of a soldier rotating
through the cohorts gradually increasing in rank (and pay). So he moved from
the tenth to the first cohort, and then back around again at the next level up.
One suspects that this was fine in theory, but never really happened that much.

Finally, Vegetius commends the idea of the legion being
self-contained, carrying with it all the equipment and men it needs for battle
or engineering works such as bridges or siege works. Again, it seems like a
nice theory, but I suspect that economies of scale would make it sensible to
provide such things at an army level. Still, theorists are for ideals, are they
not?

Saturday, 7 September 2013

One thing is clear, even at this stage: I have probably
bitten off far more than I can chew here. This does not necessarily make the
idea a bad one, or the attempt to do something sensible about the subject on
the blog impossible, but the texts are dense and lengthy. So even reading De Re
Militari is going to have to be broken up into parts.

One of the interesting things about reading De Re Militari
is that, having read a fair number of secondary sources already, I can
identify, at least in part, where some of the statements, claims and confident
assertions that they make come from. I
hope that this confidence is not mis-placed.

For example, Vegetius makes the claim that soldiers even
armoured soldiers, are more often ‘annoyed by round stones from the sling’ than
by archery. This I already knew, and it had passed through my mind when writing
Polemos: SPQR, where armoured troops get a bonus against ranged weapons except
slings. Vegetius then advises that all troops be trained in the use of a sling,
and that slings are of great service in sieges. Again, I have seen this
elsewhere, and it does seem to originate in De Re Militari.

And so to the text itself. It is addressed to the Emperor
Valentinian, in somewhat sycophantic terms. Vegetius does not (dare not?)
presume that the Emperor needs instruction in the arts of war, but the work is
designed to be an encouragement to others towards establishing the Roman Empire
along the lines of the way it was done by the ancients.

This, it seems to me, is an important point about much
ancient writing: it is backwards looking. Even innovations are presented as
being ancient. For example, Tacitus is disparaging about second century Rome.
It has gone soft. The ancients were tougher, less self-indulgent, more
virtuous, than the current Roman. Even barbarians, the Germans, for example, of
even women barbarians, such as Boudica (or however you spell her name this
year) were the equal of the Romans in rhetoric, nobility of character and
determination, even if they lost, as the Iceni did.

For Vegetius, then, the cause of the success of the Romans
in the past was their discipline, training and organisation. This is what is
missing (or, in deference to the Emperor, what needs to be encouraged) in
current armies:

“A handful of men inured to war, proceed to certain victory,
while on the contrary numerous armies of raw and undisciplined troops are but
multitudes of men dragged to slaughter.”

Of course, this is a historical truism. One could, I
suspect, derive the same point of view from Herodotus and his description of
the Persian invasions of Greece. Herodotus regarded the Persians as being
hordes, while the Greeks were the few, the heroic warriors, “inured to war”,
who could defy the world.

Vegetius then discusses in some detail how to recruit and
train good soldiers. They should be at puberty (which was, I imagine, rather later than it
currently is in the west, anyway), they should be as tall as possible (although
strength is more important) and so on. Their soundness should be assessed and
their trade investigated. Those with occupations properly belonging to women
are to be excluded. They should ideally be of noble family and honourable, as
they are then less likely to run away.

I suspect that Vegetius’ regime for training varies
relatively little from today’s armed forces: they march a given distance in a
given time. They take exercise, learning to leap and swim, and they have
weapons training.

There is also a system of punishment for soldiers not
performing. The ‘backward’ soldiers are to be put on barley rations. This does
not sound too serious to us, but wheat bread was the food of the elite. Barley was
coarser and harder to digest, as well as being harder to grind. I suspect that
being given barley rations was a bit like being made to peel potatoes today.

Vegetius makes some interesting claims about armour,
starting with the argument that negligence and sloth has caused troops to
dislike it, and slack discipline has led to its being discarded. This has, in
turn, leads to defeat by the arrows of the Goths (he has already argued that
armour is good protections against arrows). Armour, then, must be restored and
the troops exercised in it, as the legions of old used to do.

The entrenching of camps is also described. Although I have
never read De Re Militari before, it is familiar from all those secondary
sources. Which does raise the question: how reliable is Vegetius? For example,
different sizes of the fortification of camps in different circumstances are
described. A ‘slight’ ditch is nine feet wide and seven deep. Is this not
rather substantial to most people? I am not aware of anyone seriously comparing
the archaeology of Roman camps with these descriptions, which is a shame, as it
would uphold, or otherwise, the veracity of the document.

Anyway, Vegetius also describes ‘evolution’, that is drills.
Forming a rank and then doubling it, and doubling again and so on. A variety of
formations are mentioned, and the point made that these are of great utility in
action.

Finally, in another hearkening back to the glory days of
old, Vegetius demands thrice monthly marches fort both horse and foot, over all
sorts of terrain. These might even be described as military exercises;
sometimes troops are to behave as if in pursuit, sometimes in retreat and so
on. Again, I suspect this is not dissimilar to armies today.

So, there you are, the first part of De Re Militari. Two
things in particular strike me. Firstly the extensive use made today of
Vegetius when describing earlier Roman armies. Vagetius was writing in the
fourth century (probably around 380 AD) two hundred years of so after the glory
days he refers to. This is a bit like a modern author extolling the virtues of
the armies of the Napoleonic era. It may be that Vegetius’ claims are untrue,
as well. A text cannot be read in isolation.

Secondly, relatedly, is Vegetius’ constant hearkening back
to the glory days of the Empire, where the legions conquered all. This seems to
be a constant theme of military writers down the ages, to look back to an age
when all the current problems were solved.